him.  When he considered it necessary to curtail his needs, wore an old coat and gave up wine-drinking, everybody considered it eccentric and vain originality; but when he spent large sums in organizing a chase, or building an unusual, luxurious cabinet, everybody praised his taste and sent him valuable gifts.  When he was chaste, and wished to preserve his chastity till marriage, his relatives were anxious about his health, and his mother, so far from being mortified, rather rejoiced when she learned that he had become a real man, and had enticed the French mistress of some friend of his.  As to the Katiousha episode—­that the thought might occur to him of marrying her, she could not even think of without horror.

Similarly, when Nekhludoff, on reaching his majority, distributed the estate he inherited from his father among the peasants, because he considered the ownership of land unjust, this act of his horrified his mother and relatives, who constantly reproached and ridiculed him for it.  He was told unceasingly that so far from enriching it only impoverished the peasants, who opened three liquor stores and stopped working entirely.  When, however, Nekhludoff joined the Guards, and spent and gambled away so much money that Elena Ivanovna had to draw from her capital, she scarcely grieved, considering it quite natural and even beneficial to be thus inoculated when young and in good society.

Nekhludoff at first struggled, but the struggle was very hard, for whatever he did, following the faith that was in him, was considered wrong by others, and, contrariwise, whatever he considered wrong was approved of by his relatives.  The result was that Nekhludoff ceased to have faith in himself and began to follow others.  At first this renunciation of self was unpleasant, but it was short lived, and Nekhludoff, who now began to smoke and drink wine, soon ceased to experience this unpleasant feeling, and was even greatly relieved.

Passionate by nature, Nekhludoff gave himself up entirely to this new life, approved of by all those that surrounded him, and completely stifled in himself that voice which demanded something different.  It commenced with his removal to St. Petersburg, and ended with his entry upon active service.

During this period of his life Nekhludoff felt the ecstasy of freedom from all those moral impediments which he had formerly placed before himself, and continued in a chronic condition of insane egotism.

He was in this condition when, three years afterward, he visited his aunts.

CHAPTER XIV.

Nekhludoff called at his aunts because their manor lay on the road through which his regiment had preceded him, and also because they requested him to do so, but principally in order that he might see Katiousha.  It may be that in the depth of his soul there was already a mischievous intention toward Katiousha, prompted by his now unbridled animal ego, but he was not aware of it, he merely desired to visit those places in which he lived so happily, and see his somewhat queer, but amiable and good-natured, aunts, who always surrounded the atmosphere around him with love and admiration, and also to see the lovely Katiousha, of whom he had such pleasant recollections.